


The Choice of Earl Harlan

by bad_decisions



Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: Earl Harlan Week, Gen, I don't know how to tag this, Kind of angst I guess?, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-14
Updated: 2014-05-14
Packaged: 2018-01-24 17:26:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,745
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1613264
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bad_decisions/pseuds/bad_decisions
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Earl is offered a chance to return to Night Vale. Two chances. He has to pick one.<br/>Loosely based off the Greek legend of The Choice of Herakles but with Earl Harlan and marginally more gayness. (Only marginally because have you *read* Greek mythology?)</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Choice of Earl Harlan

**Author's Note:**

> This has been pretty hard to write, because for some reason I have this massive mental block when I try to write Earl, even though I love him to bits. I don’t know. It’s weird. Anyway, I hope I’ve done an okay sort of job.   
> I borrowed some stuff from punkrockgaia’s characterisation of Earl.

It is too dark to see, if he still has eyes. He’s not sure he does. Maybe he has them sometimes. He still can’t see anything.

Sometimes he has a body, or he thinks he has a body, and sometimes it feels like he doesn’t. He flickers between states of being, or the perception thereof, at inconstant intervals of what is probably time.

When he has a body, or the sensation of one, he is walking. He never stops walking. He can, and he did once, but curiosity and restlessness drove him to his feet (if they are feet) again.

Whatever he walks on feels solid, and if he stretches out his arms he can feel cold, rough walls. The ceiling is too high for him to reach, if there is a ceiling. A passage, presumably. Or a tunnel. It turns sometimes, and sometimes it divides. He chooses his direction randomly, but always continues on. There is a desiredrivecompulsion to keep moving, to find out more. Maybe he is looking for something? He doesn’t know.

When he has no sensation of body, he has no sensation of anything. He is thought and nothing. He would say he floats, but he lacks even the feeling of floating. His mind exists without external input of any kind.

The need to search does not fade in this state, so he probes with his thoughts, searching and imagining inside his own mind.

It’s mostly just something to do, he decides. A way to stop himself from going insane. Though what insane means in this place (these places?) is uncertain, and he has only the vaguest idea of why insane is something he wants to avoid.

_Earl Harlan_

He is thought, not body, when he hears the words. Does he hear them? He has no ears. No, he thinks them, but the thought does not come from inside him. Earl – yes, that’s him, isn’t it?

(He has many memories of that name. Some he likes, dwelling on them in his solitude, smiling if he happens to have a face at the time. Children and sunny days, teachers, knot tying and camping trips, parents and friends.

There are others. Darkness and pillows and soft, wet gasps, the words a loving caress in a chocolate voice. Later came tears and a cry for help, not to him, but to an uncaring void, and then his name was a goodbye. He doesn’t like these ones.)

His name is saidthoughtwrittenheard in a – it’s not a voice, but voice is the best word he has for it – a voice that feels like sex and a warm blanket and the happy, heavy feeling of too much ice cream.

When he has a body again, he thinks he can see it, so he must have eyes. Or something has bypassed the optic nerve and is placing the information directly into his – whatever it is. He flunked the Advanced Neuroanatomy badge.

It looks like oil on a puddle, smooth and shining a thousand different visible colours and a million more invisible ones.

Whatever it is, it talks (?) to him in the darkness. It’s so glad it’s finally found him; it’s been searching for so long. There’s another like it, another being, also searching, and it was afraid the other had found him first. Its name, it tells him, is Eudaemonia. It’s a lovely name. Eudaemonia.

_Earl Harlan, you are special._

He doesn’t ask why. It’s nice to be told that after so long, and by such a beautiful being, too.

_You have lost and been denied much in your life. Would you like another chance at happiness?_

He tries to ask what it means, but he doesn’t know how. Eudaemonia seems to understand.

He can see properly all of a sudden. What he sees is Cecil – of course it’s Cecil, what else would it be. Cecil is much younger, and crying. Earl recognizes the scene around them. It’s a memory, of a day so many years ago now, when they’d had to say goodbye.

“We’ll still be friends, right, Earl?” Cecil pleads.

“Of course we will, Cee,” Earl answers, as he did then. They’d tried, they really had, but longing for what they could never have had made it too painful.

He reaches out towards the memory-Cecil, but he dissolves before Earl can reach him, and he is again in darkness.

_I can send you back, Earl Harlan. Much has changed in Night Vale in your absence. A new power has ascended. Come with me, swear yourself to the Smiling God, and everything you ever wanted shall be yours. I can assure it._

Colours swim up before his eyes again, this time joined by input from his other senses. He’s in a bed, and his arms are wrapped around a person. The person shifts, turns over, nuzzles their face into Earl’s chest. It’s Cecil again. Gorgeous, clever Cecil, gazing up at Earl with an expression of love such as he hasn’t worn since – well. Since. “Hey, Early,” he mumbles sleepily, kissing his bicep.

_You can be together again. You will live a long and happy life. There is no pleasure you shall not taste, no discomfort you shall not avoid. All the delights of life, they will be yours without pain or toil._ Cecil _will be yours, and yours forever._

But that had been years ago, and Cecil had moved on even before the Eternal Scout ceremony. Earl could never compete with beautiful Carlos, and wouldn’t want to. It’s Cecil’s decision. Not that Carlos had shown any sign of reciprocating Cecil’s feelings, but he would. Everyone loved Cecil.

_The Scientist is flawed and imperfect,_ Eudaemonia soothespurrshisses.

  _You are Cecil’s first love, Earl Harlan, and he will be happiest with you. He will return to your arms in a second. The barriers that forced you apart are already gone._

_Cecil suffers in your absence. He is hurt and angry, and like a wounded animal lashes out at those who try to help him. He needs you to return and guide him to perfection, before he goes too far._

_Guide him back to happiness, Earl Harlan, and he will be only yours._

A second ‘voice’ greets him. This one feels like badges and bloody victory and ration packs on a hike. Eudaemonia’s rainbow mingles with dirt brown and khaki and dark, dark red.

_Arête has found you. Earl Harlan, you must not –_

**You have had your say, you miserable creature. As our rules dictate, now I shall have mine.**

**Do not listen to Kakia, Earl. It has never known true pleasure, nor seen good works. They that swear to the Smiling God atrophy and wither in luxury, and enslave others to keep themselves in debauched extravagance. They become selfish and greedy. No bed is soft enough, no lover satisfying, no wine quenches their thirst.**

**There is no true joy to be found without sadness.**

**The Smiling God and its followers have come to Night Vale.**

More images. His Scouts, running in fear from a swarm of yellow helicopters. Hannah Gutierrez shouting, then silent, then bleeding, and Lucy Gutierrez serving frozen yoghurt with a smile stretched unfaltering across her face. Scenes flash past too fast and too many for him to catalogue, more and more, of people Earl knows and people he doesn’t, friends and acquaintances and enemies and colleagues and strangers. Some are fighting. More are being tortured. Most only smile.

Earl’s stomach twists. Or it would if he had a stomach. He doesn’t need to eat, so maybe he doesn’t. But then, he doesn’t know how long he’s been here either. It could have been mere seconds, stretched into eons. Something in the vague region of maybe-abdomen makes him feel unpleasant.

**My sibling does not lie, Earl, Cecil needs you, but he is not alone. Night Vale needs you. And it needs you to fight with them, not lead them to lose themselves and fall under a parasitic yoke.**

Earl’s troop is surrounded by other children, of other genders, all training under Earl’s instruction. Their faces are set with determination. A brown skinned girl stands beside Earl, and they discuss tactics. Half her face is burned and melted from some great fire, but her eyes shine fiercely.

Cecil’s voice issues from a radio suspended in the darkness, desperate and hopeless. Earl sees him screaming, strapped to a table with electrodes on his forehead. Sees him cradling Khoshekh in his arms, face contorted with rage. Sees him sobbing in the arms of a dark-haired man in a lab coat.

**I cannot give you pleasure without pain, but one is worth nothing without the other. Come with me, and I will return you to Night Vale as you are.**

The children – Earl’s children – shoot down helicopters with slingshots. He guides their aim with careful hands. They grin vengefully. Helicopter after helicopter falls, and they carry them away underground with their Pilots, laying in tools for the coming war.

**It will be hard, and it will be painful. You and they will lose a great deal. But burying your head in the sand is not the answer. I will not bribe you with ignorance and sloth.**

**I cannot promise Cecil will love you, but he will be safe.**

**Your Scouts are as good as leaderless without you. The Smiling God has taken their masters. Your town is crumbling and children are the only ones attempting to shore up the walls.**

**Rally them to battle and if you fight hard enough, with tooth and nail and blood and bone and everything in between, right down to your heart’s desire and your very last breath, I can promise you it will be enough.**

Silence – or the absence of communication from other beings – falls. It stretches long and unbroken. Arête and Eudaemonia have not left, but they press their cases no further and let him think.

It doesn’t take him long.

His Scouts are in danger, the whole town is in danger, and Earl has never been selfish.

He loves Cecil, oh, how he loves him, but it wouldn’t be right. What is past should not be forced into the present.

He has already given his life for those he loved once, and he would do it again a thousand times. He is afraid of what may come, and he knows it will be awful.

But Earl has never been a coward, either.

The future is up to him.

It will be a good one.


End file.
